The Garmin 820 battery life claim is a lie. Garmin says 15 hours. Anthony got 5 hours following a course in Majorca. If you're relying on it for navigation and you don't know where you are, that's a problem.
Key Takeaways
The navigation on the 820 is the real upgrade from the 1000. The course-following function finally shows your route in a colour that's actually different from the surrounding roads. If you're using a Strava premium GPX export, it's easy to follow and easy to see. That alone makes it worth looking at if you've been frustrated by the 1000's map display.
The IQ third-party apps aren't worth the hassle. When Garmin pushes a firmware update and the app developer hasn't caught up, the whole unit gets sluggish. Anthony deleted all of them. The battery saver mode is genuinely useful though — it kills the screen but keeps recording your power and heart rate. And skip the built-in recovery time feature. If you're on TrainingPeaks or Today's Plan, your training stress score gives you a more accurate read on recovery than anything the Garmin generates automatically.
You Might Also Like
If you want the bigger picture on how the pros are actually using data and training tools, the Team Sky marginal gains episode is worth your time. And the Pogacar episode gets into what serious performance tracking looks like at the highest level.